


130 Prompts #18 - Blame

by FountainPenguin



Series: Tan Train [1]
Category: Fairly OddParents
Genre: Clowns, Gen, Pixies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2016-08-03
Packaged: 2019-07-01 23:12:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15784071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FountainPenguin/pseuds/FountainPenguin
Summary: Young Flappy Bob is in the police station. Again. Maybe it's time he stopped rebelling against the spray bottles and accepted them instead.





	130 Prompts #18 - Blame

 

 **18\. Blame**  (Pre-series)

_Year of Leaves; Spring of the Aging Fern_

* * *

The boy had turned eighteen years old today, but the clown make-up on his face made him look sixteen, fourteen, or maybe even twelve in the wobbly wooden chair. Or the boy himself thought as much, at least, because Officer Snaps made him stare into his weird magenta eyes in the one-way mirror for ten minutes, leaning back in his seat and bumping his head over and over against the wall, before he and the smaller woman who'd never spoken to him even bothered to show up in the chilly interrogation room. It was always Officer Snaps. Never Officer Green, or Winslow, or Rain (he liked Officer Rain).

"Robert Ferguson."

The boy dipped his head without straightening up. The one leg that wasn't hooked around the horizontal bar between the chair feet pedaled in a circle like he were riding a unicycle. "Hello, Officer Snaps. I really hope your day's been going better than mine. But that probably isn't hard."

"Given why you're here again, I'm sure it isn't." After shutting the door, Officer Snaps clattered down his mug (more orange juice, probably) and took his chair where it stood about two yards in front of Robert. The small woman sat down on the other side of the desk. They both spared her a passing glance before Officer Snaps said, "Happy birthday. I brought you a cupcake. Last time you were in, you mentioned chocolate was your favorite, right?"

A soft ringing sound and a ripple of air behind him warned him otherwise. Robert turned around, studied the floating seltzer bottle behind him, then decided that it was his birthday and he didn't care, and that the bottle was too much of a coward to do that much damage to him. He took the offered cupcake.

"Thank you."

A spurt of water soaked the back of his neck. Officer Snaps and the woman lifted their heads and frowned at the empty space about a foot too far to Robert's left (as people often tended to). The bottle sprayed Robert again as he peeled the wrapper off his cupcake.

"Screw off," he muttered through a mouthful of soft pastry. "I'm not in the mood today."

"Did you say something?"

"Me? I was just about to ask if you said something, sir." Licking a couple crumbs from his lips, Robert made a vague swirling motion on his left side. "Sounds like there's some coins rattling around in the air conditioner or something. You should get that looked at."

Officer Snaps didn't smile, even though his dark eyes said that he really wanted to. He pushed back his short black hair and squeaked his chair a bit closer. "You know the drill, Robert. I'm going to ask you some questions."

"Go ahead. I'm not hiding anything. In fact, I'm excited to prove it." He rolled the cupcake wrapper up and set it on the edge of the table. The seltzer bottle gave him a final defiant squirt near his waistline and disappeared with a disgusted twinkling noise. Robert smiled into the remains of his treat. In a silent room with an attentive witness, it wouldn't dare. Perhaps it had just remembered the one-way mirror.

"Huh," said the small woman, cocking her head.

"Where were you on Thursday night?" Officer Snaps asked.

"I was down at the cemetery. Looking for… stuff."

"What sort of stuff would that be?"

He squirmed his shoulders. The chair came back down on all four feet. "I don't know. Just lost things. Lots of weird, random lost things turn up at the creek behind the cemetery if you know where to look. The one that trickles down from the reservoir behind the dam? You can find cool volcanic rocks there, and sometimes hats or camera cases and stuff. I always carry a garbage bag and clean up litter while I'm out. I go there all the time. Everybody knows it. It's not really a surprise. I like coins. Sometimes when it's a good day I'll find some of those."

Officer Snaps tapped a finger to the side of his nose. "How's that Canadian penny and state quarter collection of yours going?"

Stopping the squirming, Robert just lowered his eyes. "Pretty good, actually. Thanks for asking."

"Do you have any of those on you now? I'd like to see what's new."

"You guys searched me when I came in and took all my stuff." All the stuff that wasn't in his secret pockets.

"Right. That we did. Go on."

Robert shrugged. "And that's it."

"Hm. Are you always alone when you're out wandering?"

"Usually. Depends. Sometimes the cats or dogs follow me. Denzel has a new golden retriever puppy." Just to mess with the officer's head, he added, "This one time he ran into the park where I was lying on the grass, and while we were wrestling and playing around, I fell asleep and he sat up and talked, and he told me that he's a magical fairy who killed somebody dishonorably in a war, and he ended up getting cursed in the body of a magical dog. Apparently that's a big deal, because usually magical dogs just switch bodies with someone they catch telling a lie or disobeying authority figures or something. He's a good friend. Fluffy animals are neat. They're cute and I love them." His hand crept towards the empty pocket where he usually kept his brightly-colored balloons.

After he finished jotting down a note, the big man plucked a photograph from a manila file folder and slid it down the table on Robert's right. "Do you know who this is?"

Robert spared the picture only a single glance before riveting his eyes on the bulletin board behind the quiet woman. "That's Kyle Garner. He goes to high school with me. Or he… did."

"Yes. When did you last see him?"

"Thursday night. About five minutes before I went into the cemetery."

"Why did you choose to go into the cemetery that day, exactly?"

"To cut through it to the creek. I just like it there. I like how it's always quiet. I like feeling the soft grass. I like looking to see who's gotten flowers this week and whose place needs a cleaning. I like walking around without people staring at me. I like having the space to be myself. I like reading all the names on the headstones and looking to see if anybody has one close to mine, or who's related to the people here in your town. And, clowns are funny, so being there instantly makes me a drop-dead knock-out."

Officer Snap's mouth twitched in a slight smile, then disappeared. He held his hands clasped on the edge of the desk. "What did Kyle say to you?"

Robert raised his eyes. "I didn't do anything to him."

"I wasn't trying to imply that something he said provoked you."

"Sure."

"Please, what did he say to you? Can you tell me that, at least? You'd be helping our case a lot."

Like they didn't all suspect that he was behind it. He and some gang, probably. Robert twisted his tongue around his teeth. "He just called me some rude names while we were passing each other on the sidewalk, like guys do. No biggy."

"What names, exactly?"

"Nothing important," mumbled the boy.

Officer Snaps let out a long, steamy sigh through his nostrils. He took up his mug again. "Robert, please. This isn't the first time we've gone over this."

Robert hesitated, his lips parted but his teeth still set together. "He… he just told me I was a gutter-crawler and I'd never amount to anything. He was just joking. And when he bumped me I lost my footing and tripped and slammed my head into that fence around the Davenport place. So that's why I have the dent up here in my forehead. He told me that make-up was for girls and I was about to be eighteen and that if I was a real man I'd fight him. We were just messing around- I didn't do or say anything. I didn't touch him."

"I see. You wouldn't have wanted to hurt him. You just had a momentary loss of control. And then what happened?"

"Nothing. I walked away."

"That's it?"

"Yes.  _Sir_ ," he added at the end before he could be corrected. Dodged a rubber bullet there.

Officer Snaps leaned towards the door and murmured for the small woman to pass the tissue box. She did. Robert stared at it without taking any. Was he crying? Was that why this had been offered to him? He didn't feel like he was crying.

"You know, you never told me. Why do you want to be a clown, Robert?"

He slid his eyes to the right, trying to draw up the memory. "I just… always have."

"How would you describe yourself and your abilities?"

"I've been able to ride a bike and a unicycle for as long as I can remember. I like balloon animals. Juggling makes me happy. I can run across tight-ropes. It's in my blood."

The hairs began to lift all along his spine, like his neck had just been rubbed hard with one of those same balloons. He waited for the inevitable dinging noise. It turned out to be less inevitable than he'd anticipated.

Officer Snaps nodded. "I used to do a bit of juggling myself. Do you ever go out and do those things with your friends?"

"I don't have friends. I've just learned to recognize some people."

"Such as?"

He listed a few, and stopped when he remembered what had become of most of them. Officer Snaps scratched his cheek, then laced his fingers beneath his chin again.

"You wouldn't want to hurt them, of course. Accidents happen."

Robert pointed to the quiet woman in the corner. "Shouldn't trying to trick me into incriminating myself be the detective's job? Not the interrogator's?"

Officer Snaps upturned his hands in her direction and muttered, "Why does everyone always ask me that?"

"Smart clown," Robert said, leaning back in his chair.

"All right, then. Seth Copperfield. Dead. Catherine Caroler. Dead. Darrel Underwood. Dead. Witnesses and security cameras claim that you were in the area all four times, minutes before some absurd and timely accident befell them. Always after they talked to you. Called you a name or pushed you in the mud or something of the sort." Officer Snaps leaned back in his seat after throwing down each of the file folders individually. "Update me about your home life, kid."

"Why? It's already in that file you were reading in the hallway when Officer Rain walked me past."

"Yes, it is. Let's see if I can remember the key details without looking." He put up his fingers as he counted. "Showed up at the orphanage when you were six or seven months old. Not even on the doorstep, just in the middle of Mr. and Mrs. Wainwright's office, swaddled in a gray blanket and gasping like you'd been deprived of oxygen for a day. In and out of foster families since your eighth birthday. Finally ran away from one of them at the age of eleven. Got Beatrice  _and_  Abby Gale pregnant in the same night. Ah, you jumped. You weren't informed until now, were you? Well, you'll be a father of two in another four months. Congratulations. For the last three years you've been running around the hills from here to Brightburg and stolen for a living. Did I forget anything?"

"I don't steal things."

Officer Snaps drank the rest of his orange juice. "How'd you get the money to buy that fancy suit and tie, Robert?"

The boy bit his lip. His left palm lay hot and sweaty on his knees. His right hand still cradled the last few crumbs of his cupcake, which would probably be going uneaten now. "My benefactor gave it to me."

"This would be your alleged mad scientist benefactor, I presume?"

"I'm not the one who said he was a mad scientist. Pamela did, and she doesn't know. She just reads too many conspiracy theories and makes stuff up for attention."

Frowning, Officer Snaps glanced at the silent woman with her yellow pad. She ducked her head. "Well, it's admittedly a relief to know that your mad scientist story isn't real after all."

"I- I don't know about that part. I don't know anything about mad scientists. I don't read a lot of  _Frankenstein_  books. But my benefactor's totally real. He sends me a letter every year on my birthday."

Officer Snaps quirked up one brow. "Does he? Then have you gotten one today?"

"Well… no. Not yet, which is kind of weird, but usually I don't spend my whole birthday stuck in a police station full of-"

"Idiots?"

He'd been going to say 'witnesses', but changed his mind and nodded and said, "Yes, sir". Officer Snaps scratched his clean-shaven chin and stared down at his file folder without flipping any of the papers therein.

"But there's still tonight, so…" Robert reached for the inner left pocket of his jacket and began to grope. "L-look, I have most of the other seventeen letters. They're never anything meaningful. They're just weird stuff. He always talks about himself and sometimes it's creepy and annoying. But I get what I get and I'm okay with it. I know he's real, and I know he's watching out for me. Look, it's always the same handwriting, perfect like a typeset. And it really says he's my benefactor, see?"

His fingers closed on empty air.

"Oh. Right. I… lost those months ago." All he had was that faded photograph of his clowny birth parents. They'd let him keep that.

They talked a few minutes more, but Officer Snaps at last stood and motioned for Robert to head towards the door. "Come on, kid. I'll walk you out, and you're free to skip about wherever you want until you get yourself in indisputable trouble with the law."

"Really? Just like that? You're not going to drag me back to the orphanage?"

Officer Snap's gaze was steely as they moved off down the hallway. The lady (who had finally ordered him to stop juggling the broken wheels on Officer Snap's chair in a voice that could have chiseled stone) switched off the lights behind them. "You're eighteen. We can't do anything until you commit a crime."

Robert whistled and crossed his arms behind his back. "Wow. That must be really, really annoying for you."

"It's not that annoying. We all know you weren't behind Garner's death. Sometimes, hot air balloons just crash. But if you hear any leads, you know where to find us. Happy birthday, kiddo."

He was shooed off like a dog into the evening. As soon as the door shut, not one, not two, but three seltzer bottles materialized in the air in front of him with a bright noise and shocked his skin with the coldest water he'd felt in a long while.

"Yeah, yeah, I know you're upset about the cupcake," he said, living up to his name and flapping them away. They regrouped like hornets, staring him down, before vanishing with a sort of  _zip_  of into nothingness. The blocky white hole they'd punched in the fabric of space sealed itself up behind them, and though he wrinkled his lips, he didn't think much more about them as he slouch-walked his way down the street. He'd been thoroughly hosed down as soon as he'd stumbled away from Beatrice that night (Well, stumbled away from Abby- Beatrice had been first, if his favorite). Dumped in the middle of the road, stripped of his suit, and nothing to eat. And when he found a discarded box of half-eaten Chinese take-out in the gutter, it had  _ping_ ed into oblivion out of spite. Cold, hungry, wet, he'd spent the night without any sort of comforts and gotten sick. The magic touch had been taken away from him, until after three days of sneezing and moaning he was sent a blanket and thermos of warm milk almost in reluctant apology.

After eighteen years, Robert was used to it all, as he ought to have been- everybody had secret seltzer bottles. And after making multiple faux pas, he'd finally picked up enough social cues to learn that people's temptations and embarrassing screw-ups weren't the sort of thing one really ought to discuss in public. And if the police had never asked, good for them.

As he lingered at the end of a sidewalk, waiting for the stoplight to shift colors, a cheerful voice rang out in his general direction. He ignored it, until it came again. His eyes slid left. From across the other street, Tad Turner bounced on his heels and waved to him.

"Hey, clown kid! Want to walk with me to the store? I'm going to buy a pineapple and a meatloaf. And you can come to my house and eat my cereal and play my video games, if you want."

Incredulous, Robert stared back. You did not bully the clown kid, especially if you were really mean. You did not befriend the clown kid, especially if you were really fun. Those who did either one despite the warnings tended to disappear without a trace.

But Tad Turner didn't care. He was sixteen, lived out in the woods with his scatterbrained and borderline-abusive father, had been in and out of therapy ever since third grade when he tried to convince the entire town that sweet little Sheldon Dinkleberg was training his lawn gnomes to spy on him and steal his shampoo and whisper through the cracks in the walls, had dropped out of elementary school the year he'd lost his mom, and he apparently didn't care about a lot of things anymore. Once again he waved to Robert, and smiled that stupid smile that said his brain had been a million miles away for the last decade and wasn't planning to wander back within his lifetime.

"I'd… I'd love to come over and play with you, Tad."

With a  _ping_ , one of his seltzers materialized behind him and sprayed some even icier water all down the back of his neck. Streaks of it dribbled down his collar. They even bled into his underpants. A warning.  _Remember Kyle_ , they said. This time, Robert winced.

"Ooh, actually, I just remembered that I can't."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "Just because." Also, he was hungry, and couldn't risk pushing the envelope any further tonight.

Tad looked dejected for all of two seconds, then nodded and trotted off on his own, humming something off-key. Robert raised his eyebrows. Several… several degrees off-key.

The light changed. He crossed the road. Three minutes passed. He picked up a stray branch and bumped it along the fence in front of the Buxaplenty's yard. Left street. Right street. Straight for a couple blocks. A few turns later, he hopped the fence around the cemetery and tracked down one of the grave markers that read 'Ferguson'.

Whoever was buried there, it wasn't anyone he was descended from. Or if they were, they wouldn't have known him- Harley and Agnes Ferguson had died in 1903 and 1907. Still, they were the family he had, and he would defend them to his final breath.

After plucking up a stray weed he hadn't bothered to yank out the last time he was here, Robert knelt down in the grass nearby and clapped his hands. Forty-five seconds passed, and nothing happened.

He clapped again, glancing left and right. Maybe he'd missed the window of opportunity. Maybe he'd seriously ticked off the gods with the cupcake stunt.

Then a platter of oatmeal, tofu, soy cubes, a bagel, an unbuttered roll, a handful of animal crackers, and a glass of water without ice materialized with a  _ping_. The same sort of food he always got, even when he dug in dumpsters or filled his plate with something else. It always changed. Three meals a day. Always. Would've made a fine party trick, except it only worked when no one else was around, and if it wasn't too late at night. He'd tried to show people before, too, but the food always disappeared when he did, or if he pulled out a camera. Most nights, he'd get another spray in the face and would go to bed hungry. Eventually he'd learned The Rules: The Powers-That-Be would keep him fed and clothed and safe, so long as he kept their secret and obeyed the spray bottle. Tonight, Robert thanked his benefactor aloud and tucked in.

Just as he was finishing up, a last  _ping_  signaled a late arrival to his meal: one plain vanilla cupcake lacking frosting, and one letter with his name scrawled across the back in stiff and perfect letters. Robert felt his shoulders sag in relief. Usually, he got the birthday treat for breakfast. Police station aside, he'd been wondering all day if his benefactor had forgotten. Whoever and wherever he may be.

Licking his lips, he took up the crisp white envelope and slid his thumbnail beneath the fold. "'September 19th, 1965', addressed to 'Dear Flappy Bob'," he guessed aloud, and opened it with excruciating care.


End file.
